"The best academic training ground in the U.S. for science journalists." —New Scientist

Do you enjoy explaining your work, and science in general, to non-scientist friends more than you like working in the lab?

The women and men who popularize science enjoy a career that never loses its zing. They stay in close touch with cutting-edge science, often by visiting the world's leading scientists in their labs or in the field. Science writers choose from a growing list of career options: online or print journalism; staff writing at university news offices, federal agencies, national labs, museums, and zoos; and multimedia work on the Internet and in radio.

The science writing program at UC Santa Cruz has produced professional science writers since 1981. The program is one academic year long, with internships throughout the school year and the following summer. It focuses entirely on practical training through classroom work and diverse internships, and it's the only graduate science writing program in the nation that requires a degree in science and experience in research.

Our alumni work at National Public Radio and the San Francisco Exploratorium; at science magazines in New York and Washington, D.C.; at the National Institutes of Health, Stanford, and Caltech; and at newspapers in Los Angeles, Detroit, and Philadelphia—to name a few sites. Half of our graduates freelance, mainly to live where they want and to cover the science that captivates them.